Author Archives: Murderati

Bones

I spent most of my elementary school education in the cloak room — a dark space at the back of the classroom — where free thinkers and rule mockers sulked until the final bell jangled each day. That, combined with ditching two weeks in fifth grade, landed me in a private school located in the middle of nowhere.

Actually, it was Albuquerque’s north side. But in 1969, especially for a hostile 11-year-old kid, it could have been Mars — without the possibility of water. (If anyone has seen or read HOLES, think Camp Green Lake.)

Set on ungenerous, dusty land, where tumbleweeds grew and cacti pricked, Sandia School was my version of hell. When the winds came up, grit coated our teeth — no matter how tightly we clamped our lips together. Playing field hockey (remember that, girls?) on the patchy grass usually netted more thorns in our white bobby socks than goals through the holey nets.

Sandia School also stank because it admitted only girls. The student body was so small that people noticed when I didn’t show up for class. And, the teachers made me work. Damn them!

Unwilling to succumb to these horrors without a fight, I’d hang out with another rabble rouser during free periods. Our preferred locations for rebellion were an underused bathroom where we could smoke, um, something . . . and at the edges of the undeveloped, and prohibited, acreage surrounding the school. There, we’d find the most amazing things. Turning over trash and complaining about how miserable EVERYONE ELSE was making us, we discovered a true desert centipede that was orange and about four inches long. We spotted coiled bullsnakes, round and plump horney toads, too many lizards to count, stink bugs with their butts pointed skyward, and, once, a $5 bill.

After a particularly irritating class my first fall at the school, my friend and I sought the refuge of our open space haven. Near a chain link fence — one we felt was designed to imprison us forever — a white stick caught our attention. We searched further and discovered another, curvy with holes, and then, yet another, as straight as an ice pick. Sun-bleached clean, these treasures reminded us of the fake skeleton that hung in our science lab, but we both surmised that our finds came from a cow or other wild animal; we’d seen carcasses out there before.

Still, we couldn’t keep our glee to ourselves. This booty deserved a wider audience. Though knowing we’d get into trouble, we brought the bones back to our favorite — or least detested — teacher.

Mrs. Gustafson, the 6th grade science maven, took one look at them. Her pink, cherubic face blanched. "Where did you find these?"

Shuffle. Shift foot-to-foot. Look at that crack in the floor . . . study it. "On the field."

"Where, exactly?" she said, taking our hands and leading us to the headmaster’s office.

That was it. We were going to be expelled. Our parents would kill us. Our bright futures would be snuffed out right there. It just went to show that NO ONE over 15 could be trusted.

Instead, the headmaster picked up the telephone and called the police.

Great. We’d be arrested.

Not quite.

During the next few hours, we got to skip all kinds of annoying classes. A wonderful reward. We spoke to uniformed officers and anthropologists from the University of New Mexico. I had more excitement educationally than I’d ever experienced before that day. In light of Louise’s beautiful post last Tuesday, this week I went back emotionally to that moment, the realization that these bones had been a person, to see what I felt. No nobility of spirit there. I wish I could say that those bones inspired me to become a mystery writer, but it’d be a stretch. Frankly, at 11, it just seemed incredibly cool–a Nancy Drew moment of sheer luck and adventure.

Hummm. On second thought, it may have influenced me more than I realize . . .

It turned out that the femur, pelvic bone, and humerus were from a female Pueblo Indian who’d died about 100 years before. Apparently a small portion of my school’s property unintentionally had been built on a burial ground.

Fast forward more than 30 years. In an odd twist of fate, one of my children will be attending a local private school here this fall. For this kid, it’s a joyous and wonderful proposition. Unlike Mommy-dearest, this child loves academics, lives for homework and thinks teachers are gods incarnate.

Guess what? An ancient pueblo was discovered on the new school’s land this year. My child will have the experience of working on a real archeological site. That just astounds me.

I often contend that New Mexico is wondrous and that being raised here is part of the reason I’ve chosen this literary path. When you live in a place where human influence is dwarfed by untouched land, where ancient history abuts contemporary life, where daily you’re astonished by the natural world . . . sensing mystery in each moment becomes a way of life.

How to Piss Off a Fan

Mike MacLean

I zombie-walked through Wal-Mart Friday afternoon, pushing a baby carriage and looking for a deal on formula. No, I’m not proud of it. I know Wal-Mart is the evil empire. But when you have a little one and your wife is going back to school, you’ve got to save a few bucks. That’s right, I sold my soul for low, low everyday prices.

Little Chloe started crying, prompting my wife to give me a worried look. "Don’t worry," I told her. "This is Wal-Mart. If you can’t bring a crying baby here, where can you bring one? In fact, the other customers look at you funny if you DON’T have a crying baby."

But I digress.

Among all the cheap crap I don’t need, I spotted a movie on the DVD rack. Not just any movie, but a movie that haunts my dreams. A movie that answers the question, "How can I piss off a fan?"

X-Men: The Last Stand.

If you’ve read my posts you might know by now that I’m a comic book nerd. And while I haven’t read the X-Men in almost 10 years, the mutants still hold a special place in my heart. They are the heroes of my childhood.

If I divorce myself from the comic book, the third installment of the X-Men films wasn’t bad. It’s a summer, popcorn movie that delivers decent action sequences, cheesy one-liners, and cool special effects. Though bloated as sequels tend to be, the film brims with conflict, and even makes a social statement or two between super-powered beat downs. So as a casual viewer, I dug it.

But as a fan, X-Men: The Last Stand left me feeling… pissed on.

It’s not that director Bryan Singer’s first two X-Men movies were perfect recreations of the mutant myths. He and screenwriter David Hayter played fast and loose with a few of the characters and with the comic’s chronology. But while they deviated, they always gave the impression that they respected the story and the story’s fans. I didn’t get the same feeling about director Brett Ratner and the other creators of Last Stand.

The most glaring disregard for the comic nerds everywhere was the treatment of Cyclops.

(A quick spoiler alert for those who haven’t seen it).

I could’ve forgiven the filmmakers for murdering this character if it was done in dramatic fashion. But instead, they reduced him to little more than a minor plot-point, a Star Trek red shirt if you will.

Wait. Don’t roll your eyes at me.

What you don’t understand is that Cyclops is a major character in the Marvel Comics world, one that has been around for more than 40 years. Imagine one of your favorite mystery sidekicks being knocked-off like that with barely a word mentioned about his death.

Now, I understand and respect artists who take chances. If you always second-guess yourself wondering what others will think, you won’t create anything worth a crap. When dealing with long beloved characters, however, you should tread lightly. This holds true even when the characters are of your own creation.

What if Dave Robicheaux and his best bud Clete Purcel physically expressed their love for one another in a drunken night of passion?

What if Jack Reacher, having an epiphany, decided to follow Mahatma Gandhi’s philosophy of non-violence?

What if Harry Potter got strung out on meth and ended up living in a ramshackle trailer with some muggle prostitute?

What if… You get the picture.

Which brings me to the part of the post where I ask questions.

I’ve been given the advice that you can’t write for an audience, you must first write for yourself–write what pleases you. But does this hold true for authors who’ve created popular series characters? Do these writers give up some of their ownership of the characters to the fans who have supported them for years?

Madwomen

NAOMI HIRAHARA

I had a nice and proper post all ready for today, the day that many are dancing away at ThrillerFest. It was about my attempt to lengthen a short story into a novel, with all sorts of references and tips. But then something got in the way. Dorothy Hughes.

I had heard about Hughes from Denise Hamilton, whose upcoming standalone is set in the post-World War II era. She told me how Hughes’ IN A LONELY PLACE, published in 1947, holds up so well over time. She was absolutely right. I picked up IN A LONELY PLACE earlier this week and I devoured it in huge delicious bites. (Who needs chocolate cake when you have good books!)

It has a pulp fiction plot with a subtle yet mesmerizing sociopathic voice. The lead character is Dix Steele, an educated drifter, a former serviceman who makes his way to Southern California. IN A LONELY PLACE, which was very loosely adapted into a movie starring Humphery Bogart and Gloria Grahame, was apparently one of the earlier works of psychological noir in the 20th century, predating Jim Thompson and others.

Then I discovered that this reprint of IN A LONELY PLACE is part of a Femme Fatales series published by Feminist Press. I can’t wait to get my hands on GIRLS IN 3-B by Valerie Taylor, and BUNNY LAKE IS MISSING by Evelyn Piper. Take a look at the titles, covers and descriptions of the books in the series and you might get hooked as well.

I haven’t felt this excited about discovering voices from the past since I stumbled across TO LIVE AND TO WRITE: SELECTIONS BY JAPANESE WOMEN WRITERS 1913-1938, edited by Yukiko Tanaka. Although I knew that Japanese women, both past and present, could not be classified as exotic geisha, I was still surprised by the raw and political nature of these stories. Nothing seemed taboo—adultery, female sexual domination, Marxism. Many of the writers were either active anarchists or communists. They created a Bluestocking Journal (Seito-sha) way back in 1911 (!) to tackle various feminist issues. (As an interesting aside, I just learned that 11 Edgar Allan Poe stories were translated in the first and second volumes of the Bluestocking Journal. A scholar, Tamaki Horie, explains that these translations “show the enthusiasm of the women who got together for the journal to seek freedom.” Poe and women’s liberation—who would have thunk it?)

CAPTION Noe Ito, who was the last editor of the Bluestocking Journal. She, her lover, and her lover’s 6-year-old nephew were arrested for anarchism, beaten to death and thrown in a well by military police in 1923. Called the Amakasu Incident, the killings sparked outrage in Japan and was the basis of a movie, “Eros Plus Massacre” [1969].

These works, both the Feminist Press series and the Bluestocking stories, have all caused me rethink of how we often depict “The Past” with “That 70’s Show” external gloss. Yes, the hairstyles and clothing are right, but how about the rest? For instance, were all the American women in the Fifties as passive, restrained and compliant as is popularly depicted in our present-day interpretation of that time period? Or was something a little more subversive going on?

The writings also highlight that creativity abounded among these women authors, but at a cost. Sometimes the work could not be sustained because of domestic demands. (At the height of her career, Dorothy Hughes had to abandon novel writing to help care for her grandchildren and sick mother. She developed an impressive body of critical reviews and biographical books and was honored as an MWA Grand Master.)

This past week I got together with three other high school girlfriends for our annual get-together. As the night progressed, we became more honest about the struggles in our lives. As I walked home, I thought that while we’ve all had fruitful careers that our female predecessors could have only dreamed of, the balancing of the domestic life with the “outside” life still remains very tenuous.

Dorothy Hughes and the contributors to the Bluestockings Journal are reminders that women of different times and places managed to be vibrant, active and sometimes even wild despite the repressive confines of the society they lived in. They were all madwomen in specific ways, and I’m absolutely mad about them.

Who Reads This Stuff Anyway?

I read lots of different books. Some even have words in them instead of pictures. That Clifford. What will that big red dog get mixed up in next?

So it’s easy to see what I like by looking at my bookshelves, but I can’t see what you like. More importantly, I can’t see if you like me—and if you do like me, where I fit in your literary rainbow. Now I sort of can, thanks to Amazon.com. Yes, I know, don’t all groan at once. Amazon has started listing all the titles bought by other people who buy a particular book. This is obviously a marketing move to prompt people to buy books, but for me, this is a way to identify my reader(s).

I’m a bit of a fan boy, so I hope the people buying my books are buying books by people I either know or admire. This is where guilt by association is a good thing. I’m hoping that I’m rubbing shoulders with some neat books or authors. It does wonders for my fragile ego.

So when it comes to Amazon, who are my peeps and who are my peers? Let’s have a look…

Well, me. People who bought Accidents Waiting to Happen also bought Working Stiffs. Nice. Repeat readers. Phew! The publisher will be pleased. But who else? Wow, I’m certainly among the hardboiled gang. I’m not seeing much in the way of cozy readers. Hmm, that’s unfortunate. I think they’d like me. I’m dark, but I’m not that dark. A number of the Hard Case Crime titles make the list. Good, I like their stuff. I’m among friends I admire. There are books by Sean Doolittle and Tim Maleeny. It’s nice to be among friends. There’s a dash of romantic suspense in the form of JoAnn Ross, not to mention a touch of the cosmopolitan in the form of Andrea Camilleri. There’s a little bit of humor in the form of Janet Evanovich and Troy Cook. Ooh, look at that. I’m in some prestigious company in the form of Lee Child, Michael Connelly, James Patterson, Joseph Finder, James W. Hall, Greg Olsen, Randy Wayne White, and Michael Chabon. Let’s hope some of their good fortune rubs off on me. Daddy needs a new pair of shoes. There’s Peter Abrahams. A friend gave me a book of his a little while ago and told me to read it as we have similar storytelling styles. People’s buying tastes aren’t geographically challenged. The books bought bounce all over the US and the globe. We’ve got Craig Johnson whose stories stake place in Wyoming, Christine Kling with her Florida-set tales and David Corbett who whisks the reader off to Latin America. But here’s the part I’ve been looking forward to. It’s fan boy time. I’m happy to say that people who bought me have bought Lawrence Block, Ian Rankin, Reginald Hill, Robert Crais, Jeffery Deaver, David Goodis, and Dean Koontz. These people sit at the back of my mind telling me how to tell stories. I don’t talk to myself without them there, ever present. I think I’ve just grown an inch in height. I’m clocking in at 5’-5” right now…

So from all this data, who is my ideal reader? From the above, I’d say it’s someone with a hardboiled heart and a little bit of a traveler’s soul, who isn’t apposed to bit of romance or a joke and likes a big book from someone who knows how to tell a story. Oh, and yes, they might have a small affection for someone called Simon… J

Yours on the shelf,
Simon Wood

A Man With a Gun

by Robert Gregory Browne

I was talking to a friend recently who loves language, writes
poetry and short stories and wants very much to be a novelist. She has,
in fact, started a novel, but somewhere around the middle point she
ground to a halt.

“I’m stuck,” she told me.

Welcome to the wonderful world of writing, I almost said. Instead, I
gave her the advice that I’ve often heard attributed to Raymond
Chandler:

When you’re stuck, bring in a man with a gun.

Now, since Chandler wrote mysteries featuring private eye Philip Marlowe (the most brilliant of which is The Long Goodbye),
he was probably literally suggesting that you bring in a man with a
gun. But Chandler was a smart guy and an incredible talent, so I have a
feeling he also meant much more than that.

Your Man with a Gun doesn’t necessarily have to be armed
and dangerous. If we think figuratively, he can be anything, from a
plot point to a sudden change in weather. The point is to bring in some
new element — possibly from left field — something unexpected that gets
the story rolling again and, more importantly, gets your creative
juices flowing.

Several months ago, as I was working on my new book, I found I’d gotten stuck as well, and was desperately searching for my own Man
with a Gun. It took me awhile to remember a particular plot point that
I had thought up before I even started writing the book, but once I
did, the story once again blossomed and I was on the move.

The notes for my own Man with a Gun read something like this:

Bag of clothes
Meeting of Brass
Blackburn reassigned
Carrots

Now, I know, none of these sound even remotely like a man with a gun
but, trust me, for the purposes of my story they were. These four things collectively created a plot point that propelled me forward,
probably for a good thirty pages or so.

THE WHAMMY CHART

In Hollywood, there’s a producer named Larry Gordon who supposedly
created (and I have no real verification of this) what’s known as a
Whammy Chart.

The idea of a Whammy Chart is that about every ten
minutes or so in an action movie, you need a Whammy event. Something
big happening that shifts the story and keeps the audience
interested. It could be an action beat, a sex beat, a relationship beat
— whatever. Just something that kicks up the stakes and keeps things
moving.

Some laugh at the Whammy Chart, calling it ridiculously formulaic — and they’re probably right. But in terms of keeping things moving — at least in the plotting stages — I think it’s a pretty good idea.

Of course, in novels, those ten minutes would likely translate to forty or fifty pages, but you get the drift. And we’re just talking ballpark.

Every novel, every story is
different, but I think it’s important to continually keep things
hopping, moving forward, progressing toward the hero’s goal. Give your
readers unexpected twists.

Or you may want to finally fulfill a
promise you’ve made in your earlier pages and give them an event
they’ve been anticipating or dreading, like the death of a character or
that first kiss in a budding relationship.

The real beauty of the Man with a Gun/Whammy Chart idea is that it helps
you keep from getting stuck. Even if you don’t specifically plot out
what those Whammy events are, when you do get stuck, you know it’s time for one.

It certainly works for me.

Raymond Chandler and Larry Gordon. Very smart guys.

But there are a lot of smart people here on Murderati, as well. What do you do when you’re hopelessly stuck?

Christians And Anxiety Attacks

by Alex

No, I don’t mean THAT secret – the one that you would never ever in a million years spill on a public blog. That one I’ll buy you a few drinks sometime and try to get it out of you that way.

But I was thinking about this as I’m realizing after JT’s post that Thrillerfest is THIS week, good grief, and am now frantically trying to remember the things that I need to do to get ready for this conference, at which I will be performing in the Killer Thriller Band with a dozen other authors who also happen to be outstanding musicians and singers.

Which really isn’t all that surprising. Very few authors just write.

I know authors who are doctors (F. Paul Wilson, Michael Palmer, Tess Gerritsen, Phil Hawley), musicians (John Lescroart, Tess Gerritsen, Michael Palmer, Blake Crouch, Scott Nicholson, David Morrell, Ridley Pearson), martial artists (Pari Noskin Taichert, Barry Eisler), dancers (Pari again, Heather Graham, Harley Jane Kozak, Toni Causey) and even debutantes. 😉

We’ve all had a bunch of professions. We all seem to have any number of surprising talents. I don’t know if that’s a balance to writing, or part of the basic training of a writing career, or simple financial necessity – or if in fact it’s true of every human being – that every single one of us has surprising hobbies and talents.

This is obviously a useful character exercise for authors: to ask yourself what avocations and secret pleasures each of your characters has – to design these revealing characteristics and plot where and how in your story to reveal them. Some of the best characters have a wide range of conflicting interests – take my favorite example, Hannibal Lecter (before the onslaught of too much information), with his cannibalism AND exquisite taste, his acute sense of smell, his eidetic memory, his penchant for collecting news articles about natural disasters.

There are also characters with supposedly character-revealing hobbies that for whatever reason just don’t work for me… I won’t be specific, but often the reveal of a musical talent in a hard boiled detective just falls flat for me, for example.

There’s an art to finding the right avocations for your characters, and an art to depicting them, and I think part of it is practice – we need to be constantly probing people we meet for their secret talents and passions, to see how these details fit into the whole of a soul.

All of which is to say I’m not just being nosy when I ask you this:

What’s your secret?

Here at Murderati, we know a lot of interesting and surprising details about each other by now. We know JT is an oenophile, we know Simon’s an engineer, we know Pari’s a belly dancer, we know Dusty is a lawyer, we know Ken has a PhD, we know Mike teaches high school (”Oh, Mr. MacLean!!!”), we know Toni has a construction company, we know Louise was an ad exec, we know Rob knows his way around a camera, we know Naomi did volunteer work in West Africa, we know Billie’s a Jungian therapist, we know Stacey’s a professor…

But I’m talking about something that no one here knows about you – something really surprising.

Here’s something you don’t know about me.

I’m a minister.

Yeah, really. Church of Mick Jagger. No, actually, Church of Universal Life, which you too can join – details in the back classifieds of any issue of Rolling Stone.

I got my minister’s license about six years ago when all of my friends started getting married, and heathens that we were, no one was all that comfortable with a traditional marriage ceremony, or a male officiant. That is, the women were not comfortable with a male officiant, and the men weren’t all that opposed to having TWO women up there on that dais with them. One set of my friends asked me if I’d perform their ceremony for them, which pretty much shocked the hell out of me, but they were serious, and so I got the license, and we all wrote the ceremony, and it came off surprisingly well, so well that another couple asked me to do theirs, and then people I didn’t know who saw me officiate asked me to do theirs, and I ended up doing half a dozen (all couples still happily married, thanks for asking). When the father of one of the brides asked me if I would do his funeral I decided I needed to evaluate my ministerial calling, because it was getting confusing. It’s also an incredible amount of preparation, quite a demanding avocation when my vocation is already stretching me to the limit.

So, my children, watch your drinking at these cons, because I might just sneak up behind you and marry you off when you’re not looking. I have the power, vested in me by the state of California.

No, really – what’s my point?

My point is, I – the horror writer, Berkeley radical, actress dancer singer slut who wouldn’t be allowed burial in hallowed ground in some cultures, make a pretty damn good minister, and I bet NO ONE here would have guessed that about me.

My point is – it’s our job to know these quirky things about people and about our characters. The more we know about other people’s secrets, the more capable we are of designing complex and unforgettable characters.

So it’s your turn.

What’s your secret?

And what are some of the best – and worst – character secrets/avocations you’ve read?

(Hope to see so many of you at Thrillerfest! – I”m on a panel Sunday morning at 9 am: "CLOAK OF DARKNESS – Is Horror the Original Thriller?", and of course performing at the banquet Saturday night with the Killer Thriller Band.)

Life Insurance Policy

This week’s intended Murderati entry didn’t make it. I required third party approval before it could go out and I didn’t get it in time, so please accept this blog in its place. Also, life is getting busy and I need to take care of a few things, so I’m going to be popping in and out over the next few weeks. The weeks I’m not around, my slot will be covered by some very capable guests. Please be kind to them, but don’t get too attached to them… I now return you to your regular viewing.

A fascination for the odd and the obscure drives my writing. I’m always on the lookout for strange but real occurrences that would make for a really interesting story. When I discovered the unusual business world of viatical settlements, lightning struck and I knew I had the basis for Accidents Waiting to Happen.

So what are viatical settlements and what makes them so special? In a sense, they’re a reverse insurance arrangement. If you own a life insurance policy and you want to cash it in, you go to a viatical settlement agent who will find someone to buy it. The buyer will give you pennies on the dollar for your policy and take over the monthly dues on your life insurance. In return, they will become the beneficiary when you die. The closer you are to the grave, the bigger the payout.

Viatical settlements were aimed at the elderly and the terminally ill to cover final expenses and make their last days comfortable, but the industry really took off in the late 80’s and 90’s when HMOs weren’t covering AIDS and HIV patients. Patients needed money for treatment and viatical settlements provided the perfect vehicle for that. The industry hit the skids in the late 90’s when breakthroughs in AIDS drugs extended life expectancies and the payout times increased.

I saw the beauty and the beast in this arrangement. Viaticals give people a second shot at life, or at least a comfortable end, allowing them to live out their life worry free. On the other hand, viatical settlements are a truly ghoulish proposal. Some companies ran late-night advertisements telling people how they could make money quick. See a 25% return on your money in 12 months or less. To the investor, that sounds great. But to achieve that return, someone has to die. There is no way to ignore the fact that the policy buyer is profiteering off the dead.

I came across viatical settlements on a TV news magazine show. The feature was well done. The story covered all the parties involved in one of these arrangements. They interviewed a person with HIV who had sold their life insurance as well as a retired couple who had purchased several policies through a middleman who arranged the sales. It was great to see a person who’d had one foot over the threshold of death’s door come back from the brink after selling his policy. It was shocking watching the retired couple that had sunk their retirement fund into viatical settlements. They displayed vehement disgust for the people they’d paid good money to who hadn’t had the good graces to die as predicted.

The news clip ended with a kicker and it was that kicker that really grabbed my attention. The middleman is supposed to keep the identities of the buyer and seller confidential. The man with HIV who’d sold his life insurance produced a birthday card. It had arrived unsigned on his last birthday. The message was simple and to the point. It said: Why aren’t you dead yet?

I couldn’t let this go. There was a book here. Viatical settlements presented a very interesting concept. Criminals aren’t the only ones with a price on their heads. Everyone is worth more dead than alive, thanks to their life insurance. And what if the beneficiaries can’t afford to wait to inherit? A murder would lead someone to the beneficiary, but an accidental death wouldn’t.

For Accidents Waiting to Happen, I stretched the rules concerning viatical settlements a bit to create a cat and mouse thriller. I made rules surrounding viaticals much more far ranging. Essentially, anyone could qualify. In the book, Josh Michaels takes a bribe to pay for his newborn child’s medical expenses. His secretary blackmails him when she learns of the bribe. To pay her off, Josh sells his life insurance policy. Years later, when the bribe, the blackmail and the policy sale are long forgotten, he’s driving home when he’s forced off the road by another vehicle into a river. Instead of helping Josh, the driver gives him the thumbs-down gesture and drives off. Josh survives the accident and learns he’s not the only person having "accidents." The one thing these people have in common is that they’ve all made a viatical settlement in the past.

Usually, truth is stranger than fiction, and I love that, but if I can get a hold of it, I’ll make that fiction a little stranger.

Yours with one eye on the strange,
Simon Wood
PS: On Tuesday, I passed my civics exam and my US citizenship application was approved. I become a new American on July 24th.

My First Dead Body

By Louise

I came across my first dead body when I was sixteen. I don’t remember his name and I’m sorry about that. Especially because I had so much to do with killing him.

I was cheerleader-fit that summer, and as callous and superficial as only a teenage girl can be. My mind was on high dives and bikini lines. Kevin and Eldon and Keith. Not on the job at hand.

I was the rent collector at my mother’s rooming house and I wasn’t happy about it.

The boarding house had a proud past and a dissolute future. It was built in 1888 to house the engineers, conductors and brakemen from the new transcontinental railroad that had just reached territorial Arizona, and was both the first-built and the last-standing two-story adobe building in Tucson.

By 1967, the time of my story, its decline was complete. The two-foot thick adobe walls were crumbling. Mice and mosquitoes used the sliced screen doors as grand promenades. There were only three hallway bathrooms left to service the twenty-eight guest rooms.

The clientele was in similar decline. We now catered only to the drunk, the sad, and the desperate. Sometimes they were the same person.

Friday was always a good day for collections. I took in thirty-five one-dollar bills from the Indian in room fourteen, keeping a wary eye on the knife handle sticking out from under his mattress. Lucy, my longest guest-in-residence in number twenty-three, wore only a polyester slip and painted on eyebrows. She had an open bottle of vodka on the bedside table. No glass in sight.

The character in room seven was my biggest problem. A thin, wild-eyed Latino, he’d arrived only two weeks before but was already behind on the rent.

“I have one room left,” I’d told him. “Top of the stairs at the front of the building.”

My brother and I had used plywood and discarded railroad ties to cobble together another two rooms out of the grand old wooden balcony on the second floor.

The man had no luggage — that wasn’t unusual for my clientele — but when I opened the door to the porch room, he recoiled.

“It’s wood!”

“Yes, and it’s thirty five-dollars a week.”

“But I cannot …”

“You don’t want the room?”

“It’s the splinters.”

He was haunted by splinters from New Mexico, he said. They swarmed around him and prevented him from leaving town. They even kept him from going to see his daughter for help.

“They attack. They jab like knives. They try to blind me.”

“Take it or leave it.”

He’d steeled himself and swallowed hard. I handed him the key, but he was still standing in the hallway when I started back down the stairs.

Crazy fucker.

I did have one other room, but it hadn’t been cleaned and I wasn’t about to do that when it was a hundred and ten degrees out. And what the hell, it had a wooden ceiling too.

He’d paid for the first week, but I hadn’t seen him since. I’d squinted through the screen door when I’d come by on Wednesday. He was asleep on the bed and no amount of pounding or yelling could rouse him.

I wouldn’t go away empty handed today. I was hot and tired and angry about having to be a slumlord-cheerleader. I felt almost justified in having sentenced Mr. Cabeza Loca to a windowless, all-wooden room for the week.

But something was different today. The air was not just hot but fetid. There was a thickness to the smell, something that clung to the back of my throat like sewage.

He was on the bed. Dirty gray boxers and yellow toenails. One hand flung sideways off the mattress.

This time there was no rise and fall of his chest. No thin wheeze of restless sleep.

And his fingers were covered in a dark red tint.

The paramedics didn’t arrive very quickly. It was August, after all, and they had lots of dead bodies to attend to in this heat. When they did get there, I heard one paramedic tell his partner, “Did you see his fingers? He tried to claw his way out of there.”

I do not take death lightly now. Not in life and not in literature.

It is never pretty. It is rarely peaceful. And it can be soul rending to those left behind.

And I can’t read crime fiction that devalues that experience. I don’t care if you’re writing about an amateur sleuth who keeps tripping over bodies or the police detective who has to deal with them every day. Don’t make a joke of it. Or, if you do, show me that humor is the only way the character can deal with the death, because his heart is breaking.

Ken Bruen reminded us several weeks ago about the Bossuet quote:

“One must know oneself,

to the point of being horrified.”

I do, and this nameless man on a Friday in August, 1967, is part of it.

We’re all carrying splinters from New Mexico somewhere in our past.

LCU

What’s a body worth? Calculate it!

by Pari Noskin Taichert

Putting on the first bathing suit of the summer can be a traumatic experience. Dimples appear in places they shouldn’t. Untanned thighs look like tapioca pudding. Stomachs pouch. Chests sag. It’s enough to make us pray for winter.

Instead, I’ve lowered my expectations.

Forget the bikinis or tankinis. I’m going for the old-lady garb. You know, the brightly colored suits with the little skirts that take attention away from the lower body. Hey, my arms are still in shape. And, with that low-cut front, you might even think I’ve got cleavage.

I’ve also instituted a better exercise regime. This is especially important since most of my day is spent at home, on my butt, in front of a computer. In addition to Tae Kwon Do, I’ve started swimming. Alas, from all the articles I’ve read — and charts I’ve studied — housework isn’t worth the effort. If it doesn’t burn enough calories, I’m not interested.

I’ve cut down on caffeine and increased my fresh veggie intake. I’m religious about wearing a hat/cap outdoors and no longer sunbathe at midday.

But what’s it all for? We all know the ultimate outcome of every good piece of "healthy" — a.k.a. "cardboard"– food consumed, every extra step taken, every scotch unsipped and every positive thought thought.

Sooner or later, we’ll all end up like Agatha Christie, Edgar Allen Poe and Sir Walter Conan Doyle — in the ground or mausoleum, on a mantle or scattered on a mountain top.

Fear not, my lovelies. There’s good news even as we face this most mortal reality.

I present to you . . . the Cadaver Calculator. Yes, it’s true. (Mystery writers: I call "dibs" on the obvious storylines.)

Go on. See how much your body is really worth. You just need to answer 20 tiny questions.

I came in at a little more than $4000.

What about you?

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Don’t Forget!!!!! Ken Bruen is on the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson TONIGHT. I bet this blog is going to be abuzz with delight tomorrow morn.

NO! SLEEP! TILL BROOKLYN!!!

by JT Ellison

A perfect example of how a word can alter a story. I doubt the Beastie Boys would have rocketed up the charts with "No Sleep Till Manhattan," or "No Sleep until July 16th when I get home from the most excellent weekend of the year, THRILLERFEST." Whoops, I’m digressing again. And dating myself. Egads!

Yes, it’s that time of year again, folks. I’m leaving for New York on Wednesday. Last year’s Thrillerfest in Phoenix was my very first large conference, and I had a blast running around with the Killer Year crew, meeting my literary gods, attending the coolest panels, and generally being an idiot. This year will be much, much different. I’m a teensy bit nervous, to tell you the truth.

When I look at my schedule for the four day event, it astounds me to think of how much time, effort, and hard work the organizers of this conference have gone to. I’m on two panels, have a video shoot, lunch with my editor, dinner with my agent, a cocktail party, a volunteer stint on Friday, the ITW general meeting, Author Bingo to participate in, panels of friends and authors I admire to attend, and the most important job: people to meet, readers to hopefully impress — I wonder how in the world the people who are organizing the conference and the headliners have time to think, much less be ON for four days. Mind-boggling, really.

What’s odd about this year is the fact that I’m an author. Yes, last year I got my name tag and nearly burst with pride when I saw ITW AUTHOR under my name. This year, it means something. I have a book to promote. Friday morning I need to introduce myself to who knows how many people, utilizing a microphone no less, and pray I don’t make an ass of myself or turn into a gibbering mess, bumbling my way through my 60 seconds, or pass out when Lee Child asks me a question. (Lee, if you’re reading, be gentle.) Sunday I’ll be on a panel with friends and strangers, answering questions for an audience. An audience, people.

Jitters? Hmm. I do and I don’t. I’m never thrilled to have to be the center of attention. Sure, I like attention as much as the next person, but I’m more of a one-on-one kind of girl, because to be honest, I like to hear about the other person more than I like to talk about myself. I know I need to conquer this little fear, and I will. But I’ll probably stutter and stammer a few times along the way. And you know what? That’s okay. The world will not end if I say "Um," a couple of times. Will it? On no. Don’t answer that. You’ll just get me thinking.

So why do we do this to ourselves? Being a novelist these days means a full media presence is necessary. You need to be witty, sharp on your feet, willing to step out of your comfort zone and expand your horizons. You need to be able to talk to booksellers and reviewers. Most importantly, you need to be able to talk to your readers. I don’t have any yet (unless you scored a now hard to get galley at BEA) so I’m still in a nice little comfort zone of pitching the story (ALL THE PRETTY GIRLS introduces series character Taylor Jackson, a homicide lieutenant chasing a vicious serial killer through the southeast.) As a debut author, the expectations are two-fold. Be able to talk about your book and your writing in a semi-intelligent manner, and maintain some semblance of sageness and sobriety after hours. The way I look at it, don’t step on your tail, and don’t step on the tail of any other author, and you should be okay.

Toss into the mix that I’m a complete goober fangirl, will be channeling my inner Valley Girl (like, OHMIGOD!) at the mere thought of being under the same roof as the incredible authors who make up the membership of International Thriller Writers (Lee Child! Barry Eisler! Gayle Lynds! Vince Flynn! Jim Rollins! Tess Gerritsen! on and on and on) and Bob’s your uncle.

Bear in mind, you never get a second chance to make a first impression. Thrillerfest isn’t a party. It’s a business meeting. I’m so thankful that hubby will be traveling to New York with me. As my business partner, marketing maven, manager, etc., he is also my rock. Not every author is lucky enough to have such a savvy spouse who can take time from their own important life to support them. I’m blessed in that regard. It’s also great for him to see the inner workings of the conference, to meet the players, to continue learning the industry from the inside. And if I blow it, which I may well do, he’ll be there to hold me up.

So here I am, on the cusp on another major moment in my publishing career. Not only do we have Thrillerfest looming, the galleys have gone out to the reviewers. With first timer-itis coursing through my delicate debut veins, I’m in that wide abyss of wait and see. Will they love it? Will they hate it? Honestly, I expect to have a bit of both, and hope for a nice showing of middle ground positive. But who knows? Crime fiction is a terribly subjective genre. What rocks one readers boat may drive a hole through the bottom and sink the yacht of the reader next to them. You’ve just got to have faith that your agent and editor aren’t lying to you, that the whole publishing scenario isn’t some kind of big cosmic joke where you wake up one morning having only dreamed you’ve published your baby.

If you’ll be attending Thrillerfest, please, come say hello. I’d love to meet any and all Murderati readers who have been sharing this journey with me. Let’s sit down in the bar, share a lovely glass of red, and you can tell me a little more about you.

And then, I plan to sleep. Wish me luck!

Wine of the Week: Since I’m of two minds about my nervousness, let’s do light and dark this week. A lovely Cusumano Nero D’Avola will address my angst, and to celebrate the book releases of my dear friends, Brett Battles and Jason Pinter, a little bit of fine Italian bubbly, a Zardetto Prosecco.

BREAKING NEWS FROM MURDERATI to All You Naughty Little Monkeys

Don’t forget to watch our own Ken Bruen on THE LATE LATE SHOW with Craig Ferguson July 9th!!!!